1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to an improved telephone booth, and particularly relates to a telephone booth having the shape of an inverted truncated pyramid and containing remote activated dialing mechanism and remote activated voice receiving and transmitting devices. It specifically relates to a telephone booth containing features for safekeeping of money and for tamper-proof telephone circuitry.
The telephone booth has become an accepted item on the personal and commercial scene. The traditional booth, as seen in airports, along roads, and other places of common use, is a rectangular box which houses a telephone. The telephone inside the box has a dialing mechanism, a hand-held receiver for talking and listening which is connected by a telephone cord to the telephone circuitry, and a coin slot for placement of coins to activate the telephone. The coins are usually collected in a locked box just beneath the dialing mechanism. The hand-held receiver is stored in a holder which acts as a switch to activate the telephone circuitry when removed for use of the telephone. The user of the telephone must activate the switch by removing the receiver from the holder and must activate the voice communication circuitry by placing the proper amount of money in the coin slot. Both tasks must be completed by the user before the telephone can be used to communicate.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The prior art telephone booths all have the disadvantage in that privacy is difficult to achieve and maintenance costs are high due to vandalism. The rectangular box type booth gives some measure of privacy since the user stands or sits totally within the box. However, such construction is relatively expensive and these total-enclosure boxes are subject to vandalism. Vandalism takes the forms of mutilating the dial mechanism which requires expensive replacement repairs; of pulling the cord off entirely requiring full replacement; of breaking open the money box and robbing its contents requiring the repair or replacement of the box or lock. The ease of destruction or vandalism is in part caused by the fact that the user-vandal can stand in front of the telephone, act as if using the phone, and perform the acts of vandalism. The "more-open" type prior art telephone booths give more security against vandalism but at the expense of privacy. The more-open booth includes those with simple partitions between multiple telephones and those with some form of partition from the waist up of the user on two sides and, perhaps, over the user's head; in each instance, the user's body is largely outside the more-open booth structure.